


The Royal Portraits

by definitelynotalesbian



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Hair Braiding, Happy Azula (Avatar), Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), M/M, One Shot, Panic Attacks, Portraits, Post-Canon, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28395630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/definitelynotalesbian/pseuds/definitelynotalesbian
Summary: Azula was back in the palace. It wasn’t the first time she was back here after the war. But this time was different.Maybe it’s because of the portrait that’s supposed to be done of her, or maybe it’s the fact that Jin and her friends are with her.(rated teen for cursing and panic attacks but it’s nothing graphic)
Relationships: Aang & Jin, Aang/Katara (Avatar), Azula & Sokka (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Azula/Jin (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	The Royal Portraits

It’s been 10 years since the end of the war now. 10 years of recovery after everything that had happened.

Azula doesn’t see figures looming in the shadows anymore, sometimes there is still a small voice in her head that tells her they are never truly gone. It makes her neck hairs stand up, it makes her body go cold, even in the humid heat of Caldera City. 

Thankfully, she isn’t alone anymore. Zuko has been of great help, alongside the Avatar and his friends.

They have all helped her become a good person, for some reason. And while she may not admit it, Uncle Iroh also helped a bit, if it wasn’t for him, she never would have gone to Ba Sing Se and she never would have met Jin. 

And Jin was… the best thing in Azula’s life. Only with her smile, Jin could make a whole room lit up and that fact drives Azula _crazy_. Not because she’s jealous or anything, but because she just can't believe that Jin chose her. 

Azula, out of everybody on earth. Jin chose Azula. 

It’s unbelievable, even after so many years, that Jin willingly wants to be a part of Azula’s life. That Jin wants to take part in all the stupid stuff Zuko wants them to be a part of. 

“I am not doing a portrait. And you can’t make me.” Zuko is being a royal pain in the ass, he wants to get a portrait done to celebrate Azula and Jin’s engagement and hang it in the palace halls. 

(Azula thinks Zuko is doing it as a fuck you to their ancestors. Zuko won't admit it)

“Please, Lala?” He tries putting on his best polar-pup eyes “ You two can have one like Sokka and I’s!” She scoffs at the eyes he makes, he knows damn well that they only work on Sokka.

“No thanks. Yours is so icky.” She crosses her arms in front of her chest and feels the corners of her mouth twist upwards when Zuko makes an offended noise at her comment. Sokka on the other hand levels her a challenging smirk. 

“What’s wrong Azula?” He says as he gets up from the cushion on the floor to wrap his arms around Zuko’s shoulders, “Afraid yours won’t be at our level?”

Oh, so he wants to play that game. War it is, then.

“Oh please, you can’t even compete with us,” she turns to look at Jin, who is playing her second round of pai sho against Aang, “Right, Jin?”

“Oh for sure, babe.” She replies not even looking up from the board where she is intensely confusing on how to beat the Avatar.

“See? Our portrait will be better,” Azula turns back to look at Sokka now sitting down on Zuko’s lap. Gross, she thinks, “Just like we are better at pai sho than you two idiots.”

Sokka looks livid at the insult, jumping to his feet to point an accusatory finger at Azula, “Hey! You guys only won because Zuko sucks at it!” Sokka looks back at Zuko who is watching them with an unimpressed look from where he is sitting on a cushion on the floor, “No offense, love,” He says in a much quieter tone.

“Does that mean you’ll do it?” Zuko is standing now, grinning and looking at Jin and Azula with a particular glint in his eyes.

Azula almost says no, but dammit a challenge is a challenge, and if it allows her to beat Sokka and Zuko at their own game, so be it. 

“Ugh, fine” she rolls her eyes at Sokka who is smirking at her in that annoying way he always does. 

Azula walks over to where Jin is still playing pai sho, the game is looking favorable for her and Aang looks like he is trying hard to think of a way to beat her.

“Jin?” She gently touches her arm, only for it to be brushed off.

“Hold on a minute, 'Zula! Just need to finish this quickly…” She brings her hand to her chin and with her free one, she takes a board piece and places it in another space “Aha! I win!” She’s out of her seat in a second, grinning ear to ear to a confused-looking Aang. 

“Wh- What!? How?” He shrieks from his seat, scowling at the board as if it personally offended him “I don’t like this game.” He says as he crosses his arms over his chest.

“Sure thing, buddy,” Jin goes to pat his shoulder and when she makes eye contact with Azula, she grins even more than she already was, “Were you going to say something, babe?” 

“Uhhh, yeah, actually,” Azula says, suddenly remembering what she was about to ask Jin, “Do you want to do the portrait? You don’t have to of course-” Azula’s cut off before she can finish her sentence by Jin literally throwing herself into her arms and nearly making them both tumble to the floor. 

“Of course I want to!” Jin now has one hand on each of Azula’s shoulders, she has a bright smile on her face and for a moment all Azula can do is stare at her “It’s really sweet you asked, though.” And yup, Azula is blushing, now.

“Oh, and we are the icky ones?” 

“Shut up, Zuko.”

\-----

And that’s how Azula and Jin ended up in their chambers being tended to by at least a dozen royal servants. A couple of them were brushing their hair, putting on oils and whatnot. Others were delicately tending their nails and giving them massages. 

Jin seems to be enjoying it, she has a kind smile on her face and she can’t stop thanking the servants for everything they do. It’s sweet to see her happy.

Azula thinks she’s supposed to feel relaxed, but she hasn’t had this many people touching her since she was an angry teenager. 

She can’t help but feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable, and Jin seems to catch up on that because then she’s politely asking the servants to give them some space.

Azula hadn’t even realized she was on the floor until Jin appears in her vision, smiling gently at her and crouching down in front of her “‘Zula?” she asks softly “Are you okay?”

Azula doesn’t really what to answer, so she just stares at her green eyes. She is certain she isn’t fine, sometimes stuff like this happens. Azula gets overwhelmed and has to take a moment to breathe, thankfully the feeling of Jin’s gentle hand on her wrist helps her calm down a bit. 

“It’s okay, take your time.” Jin says.

They sit in silence for a while, Azula takes deep breaths and practices the exercises she learned in therapy for when she got all winded up like this, Jin is gently rubbing soothing circles in Azula’s hands and for a minute, time feels like an illusion. 

When Azula’s breathing is back to normal, she opens her eyes to find Jin looking at her with a tiny smile on her face, and she can’t help but say: “Thank you.”

“For what?” For a moment, Jin looks confused by it, but she continues “It's the least I could do.”

Even after knowing each other for four years, Azula feels like she may combust at the way Jin is looking at her, and suddenly all she can think about is how much she loves her. So she reaches out and pulls Jin into a warm hug, at first Jin seems to be surprised, since she is usually the one to initiate the hug but she immediately relaxes into Azula’s arms, wrapping her own around her waist while they sit on the floor. 

They come apart after what feels like minutes and Jin is smiling softly when she gives a glance at Azula’s hair and her eyes lit up as she gets an idea.

“Do you want me to do your hair?” she asks.

Azula finds herself nodding energetically at Jin’s question. She loves it when Jin offers to do her hair, her gentle hands always seem to find a way to help Azula feel better after panic attacks.

Jin carefully stands up and reaches a hand to steady Azula as she gets up from the floor. Then, she guides her to their bed, where she makes Azula sit down while she goes to look for a hairbrush and hairpins.

She’s back in the blink of an eye, and she gives Azula a quick peck on the lips as she makes her way to sit behind her on the bed.

Jin starts by slowly brushing her hair, using her fingers alongside the hairbrush to disentangle the stubborn knots, Azula lets her eyes fall closed as she lets her body relax. She loves how delicate Jin always is when she does her hair, and she’s grown used to the feeling of Jin’s hands on it, but she has to admit that it was hard to let someone touch her hair at first, or even let someone see her with her hair down; after the war had ended, she had grown to dislike the way it made her look when she had it fully down.

It made her look like her mother, and people used to be always reminding her of that, but with Jin it was different. She had never met Ursa, so she didn’t know what her mother looked like, and that had been such a blessing.

That didn’t stop Azula from cutting off her hair, though. A couple of months after she met Jin in Ba Sing Se four years ago, in a moment of impulsiveness, she -with Jin’s help- had taken some scissors and cut off her hip-length hair to above her shoulders, and she had loved that hair so much, she kept cutting it to the same length until a couple of months ago when she started to grow it out again.

Jin started braiding her hair at that moment, and then she started humming to herself one of the songs she always plays on her flute. It’s a nice melody and Azula refuses to admit it but it’s one of her favorite songs, and that is totally unrelated to the fact that it’s also Jin’s. 

Azula joins in too, but instead of humming, she quietly starts to whisper the lyrics to the song, Jin’s hands go still for just a second before she starts to sing along.

They sing every single song they know, from beginning to end and when they finish their last one, they erupt into laughter. It’s nice, it’s moments like these that remind Azula how head over heels she is for her fiancé. 

As they quiet down, Jin retires her hands from Azula’s hair and squishes her shoulders, whispering in her ear “It’s finished,” she kisses her neck “Do you want to see it?”

Azula nods enthusiastically and Jin gets up from the bed to go look for a mirror, then she sits back down, this time in front of Azula as she hands it to her.

She looks at the mirror and the person who is looking back at her is… beautiful.

She looks beautiful. 

Her hair is in a type of formal updo, her hair braided into a low bun with a couple of shorter strands poking out from the sides. It’s nothing extravagant like she’s seen in the other Royal portraits, but Azula thinks it’s even better.

Jin clears her throat, bringing Azula back to reality and making her realize that she hasn’t said a word of what she thinks about the hair “Umm, I brought this for you,” that makes Azula looks down at Jin’s hands, and she realizes she’s holding a golden hairpiece with pink lilies embedded in it “It was my mother’s and I- umm. I thought you would like it.” Jin looks flustered, and it’s not often that Azula gets to see her fiancé this way, since Jin rarely gets nervous around her, she has always been the overly-confident one “So, here,” she extends her hands and delicately places the hairpiece in Azula’s pale hands.

Azula takes a long look at it, admiring all the little details it has. If she brings it closer to her eyes, she can see little rays of purple sprinkled across the pink gem. She looks at it for one more second before she’s throwing herself into Jin’s arms and kissing her passionately. 

Agni, If Azula were to die right this instant, she would die the happiest person on earth. 

They eventually break apart, since their kiss had become too toothy from how much they were smiling. “Thank you.” she manages to say in between the knot in her throat. 

“Do you want me to put it on your hair?” Jin asks with a kind smile on her face. 

Azula tries to say yes, but the word dies down at the back of her throat, so she just nods. Jin moves to sit behind Azula again and she feels Jin’s hands carefully place the hairpiece in the braided area of her head. Then she is back in front of Azula and kissing her again, with so much love that Azula feels herself begin to tear up.

\-----

An hour later, after they both stopped crying, they meet with the royal painter, a kind man in his late 50s with greying hair and brown skin. He told them to sit down on the couch and do whatever pose they wanted. 

Jin wanted to make it as ridiculous as she could and a part of Azula also wanted to, but she remembered Sokka’s challenge and insisted -or tried to- on keeping it fancy. They ended up sitting next to each other, one leg crossed over the other, intertwined hands resting over their thighs, Jin’s head leaning into Azula’s shoulder and easy grins on their faces. 

“I love you,” she says into her hair.

“I love you too.” comes Jin’s reply.

At that moment, Azula remembers something Uncle Iroh said a couple of years back when they were in Ba Sing Se: 'One day, you’ll find someone who is so easy to love, you’ll find yourself wanting to get lost in them.'

She thinks he was right.

\-----

A couple weeks later, the portrait it’s finally done and it’s time to know whether or not they won the challenge.

Azula thinks they did because they always win against Sokka and her brother, Jin says that it’s ‘up to the judges’. 

Apparently, Jin had convinced Katara and Aang to act as the judges and decide whose portrait was the best.

“Ummm, I don’t know!” says Aang looking frantically between the two paintings perched on the wall, “Druk looks pretty cute in this one but Jin looks so pretty here!” 

Thanks to Aang’s indecisiveness, Azula suddenly feels like putting something on fire, and that feeling seems to be reciprocated by Sokka whose right eye is twitching like crazy, “Aang, for the love of all that is sacred, could you  _ please  _ just choose one,  _ please, _ ” he says with a loud groan as he drags his hands over his face.

“Yeah, hun, no offense but, it’s been half an hour.” Says Katara with her hands on his shoulders.

“But both of the portraits are good! They are beautiful in their own ways!” he exclaims at the same time Azula lets a groan escape her throat, and Sokka starts hitting his head against the wall, all the while Zuko pretty much yells, “Just choose one already!” 

“Ok, ok! Umm… ah!” He is looking between the two portraits, his head, a bald blur, and for a moment Azula thinks his head is going to fly off, “Zuko and Sokka’s!” he says as he exhales loudly and then freezes at Azula and Jin’s murderous gaze, to which he winces and mouths an apology. 

Zuko is cheering with his husband like teenagers to which Azula and Katara are making a good note not to acknowledge. Katara then presses a kiss to Aang’s temple while she pushes him out of the way to look at the portraits “Well, it’s my turn now!” She says with a mischievous smirk that makes Azula’s blood go cold -she may be a little scared of Katara, what about it?

Katara makes a good show of pointing every small detail of every painting, and it makes Azula think that Aang and Katara were made for one another. After ten minutes of snarky comments about both portraits, Katara goes quiet and the whole room seems to notice because they all go silent in an instant. 

“Katara…?” Zuko is the only one brave enough to speak.

She turns around to look at every one of them in the room, holding eye contact for just a second and them moving onto her next victim- wait no. Person. Moving onto the next person.

“I've made a decision,” she says with a grave tone.

“Which is…?” Azula is the one to talk this time.

“Good question!” She beams at them and turns back to look at the paintings behind her, “Considering how different the angle is for both of them and the lighting is also different..”

She gets interrupted by the sound of multiple people groaning “Tui! Ok, I was just kidding!” She turns to level a frown at them “The better one is absolutely Jin and Azula’s.”

Azula can’t help but take Jin’s hand in hers and scream like a maniac to be heard over Aang's cheering and Sokka and Zuko’s protests.

The screaming is only stopped by Jin’s voice “Wait, doesn’t that make it a tie?” She asks as she brings her index finger to her chin. 

They all go quiet as they process what Jin just said and all Azula can think is ‘Oh, for Agni above’ the quiet is interrupted by Sokka’s yell “Katara!?” 

“Yeah!” Says Zuko in support of his husband.

And then more sibling fighting ensues thanks to Katara and Sokka who are yelling at each other stuff like “Why do you always need to be against me?” or “It’s not my fault your portrait is boring!” and Zuko and Azula also yelling at each other “Azula, why do you have to turn everything into a competition?!” and “Shut up and get a better taste in posing!”, all while Aang and Jin are quietly starting another game of pai sho while they wait for their significant other to stop yelling at each other. 

And in the middle of the chaos, comes barging in none other than Toph.

“What the _fuck_ is going on here?” She all but yells at them. 

They all fall quiet for a second and then immediately start talking over one another. To which Toph has an exasperated look on her face. 

“You are having fun without me? I could hear your bitching from the garden!” She looks in Zuko and Azula’s direction and levels them a threatening glare, then she turns and looks to where Aang is whispering something in Jin’s ear, “Twinkletoes, care to explain?” 

Aang grimaces and replies “They are trying to decide whose portrait is the best.”

At that Katara looks up and says “Toph! You can help us decide!”

Toph just levels an unimpressed look in her direction “Yeah, sure, get the blind girl to decide the best portrait.”

Sokka groans at her response but he seems to get an idea because then he’s running to where Toph is standing and dragging her to the wall where the paintings are perched “But you can feel it with your hands!” He takes one of her hands and places it on top of the rough paint “See! Or I guess, feel?”

“Huh, I guess you aren’t that dumb after all, snoozles.” 

“Thanks, Toph,” he says with a smile that quickly changes into a glare as he registers her words “Hey!” he manages to say before Toph is pushing him back to where Zuko is sitting on the floor and telling him to shut up.

She spends a long time touching every corner of both portraits, spending extra time feeling the texture of each part of the painting. Then she turns around and says “Sparky and snoozles…” their faces immediately lit up and they throw their hands up in the air, only for Toph to add: “Yours is the worst painting I’ve ever seen.” 

Azula feels herself being lifted by Jin’s strong arms, then she’s turning her around and kissing her hard on the mouth. She laughs into the kiss and then breaks apart to look at Sokka who is now demanding a rematch and saying how ‘unfair’ Toph is. 

What a bad loser, thinks Azula.

Next to him, Zuzu is glaring at Katara, who is consequently teasing them about how women are always better than them. And Aang is sitting with his legs crossed on the floor trying to feed Momo some leachy fruits while glaring at Toph who has her feet on his lap trying -and failing- to sneakily steal Momo’s food. 

And in this room, Azula feels at home for the first time in a while.

\-----

Decades down the line, after they have all left this earth, their portraits stand in the Fire Nation’s palace halls. 

The paintings have since lost some of their bright colors and have been repainted in an effort to maintain the faces that once roamed these halls. 

Every day people stop to look at the paintings, at the smiling faces perched on the wall. 

A portrait of Firelord Zuko with his husband, Ambassador Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, along with their red dragon, Druk. 

Next to it, Lady Azula with her wife, Jin of the Earth Kingdom. 

And lastly, Avatar Aang’s portrait with Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, and their lemur, Momo.

They’ll be remembered even after there is no one left on Earth that knows their names.

**Author's Note:**

> HOW ARE WE DOING JINZULA NATION??? 
> 
> This was a joy to write, seriously, I got this idea while I was taking a shower and I just had to write it before I forgot it. Also, this is the first fic I've written for this fandom, so let me know if you enjoyed it! 
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/wlwsforzuko)


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